Trying to discern delineation of genetics vs. culture is very much in the weeds, particularly given that, at least as far as PHB is concerned, the setting is implied rather than defined.

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 01, 2021, 09:12:52 AM

Quote from: Zelen on August 01, 2021, 03:10:14 AM
To switch gears back towards 5e, I find the layout of the 5e PHB pretty odd. Does anyone else agree?

The book describes some basics for how TTRPGs/D&D work, and then asks you to think of a character. Then the first thing the book does is dump you into a deep list of Races & Classes. Only after you wade through 100 pages of crunch does the game introduce the idea of creating a backstory. Then there's a ton of stuff on equipment, multiclassing, feats, and only after we've waded through all that do we get to character attributes.

I get that in a certain sense with 5e, background story & character attributes aren't really all that important, and they are mentioned briefly beforehand, but I find it strange to dump players headfirst into Race & Class selection.

I'll agree with the sentiment. Lord knows I didn't use it for my own book.

To me a logical layout is;
- Introduction & Basic Rules
- Universal Rules (skills, movement, etc.)
- Character Creation (concept, player motivation, character motivation)
- Kind (my equivalent of Race; so what you're born as)
- Background (who you are outside of adventuring)
- Class (your combat/adventuring abilities)
- Equipment

Basically, all the rules you really need in play are in the first 30-40 pages. Everything else is only needed when building/leveling up a character and will be on your character sheet. Character creation is laid out in the order of concept, what you are, how you were raised, how you were trained to adventure and what equipment you use to do it.

I took a similar approach to the GM material;
- Setting up the campaign (concepts; silly or serious, heroic or horror, restrictions/house rules).
- Building the setting
- Building NPCs (and custom opponents)
- Building Adventures
- Adventure Rewards
- Pre-Gen Opponents (i.e. the Monster Manual)

So again... concept, the world, characters who live in the world, things that happen in the world, rewards for PCs who get involved in the world and finally an appendix of opponents to pit the PCs against if you don't want to use the NPC section to build your own.

While both of you are sorta, kinda correct you forget one thing:

The order is what it is to help you make a character and start playing WITHOUT having to read ALL the rules. Now this might be bad design or an error seeing how many players don't know the very basics of the rules. But that's the intent behind this design.

As for Backgrounds... I'm using them in one of my games: Social, Laboral, School. But those are tables to roll on (or IF the GM allows to choose from), not 15 pages of backstory. This is one of the things I would cut from 5e.

Quote from: Zalman on August 01, 2021, 12:33:29 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on August 01, 2021, 12:26:35 PM
How much of an elf's excellence with bows is based on training, and how much on the super-human dexterity that is genetic?

That question would make more sense to me in a game that didn't have a separate vector for measuring dexterity.

Here's the thing: You were born with certain advantage, lets say you have more fast twitch muscles than other races. This would give you and advantage, partly this can be overcome with some training.

But no matter how hard your Halfling trains he will never be as strong/fast as a strong/fast human. Because genetics.

This is what the racial moddifiers represent.

Something I would include in 5e

Quote from: Zelen on August 01, 2021, 01:09:07 PM
Trying to discern delineation of genetics vs. culture is very much in the weeds, particularly given that, at least as far as PHB is concerned, the setting is implied rather than defined.

This much is true to a point. Unless in the setting you define certain cultures, for instance: Dwarves are a hardy race, honorable to a fault, magic resistant,etc.

How would you justify now a Dwarven thief in good standing with Dwarven society? Or a Dwarven Wizard?

On the other hand limiting class choices for Halflings and leaving out Hunters, Warriors and other classes makes zero sense, since they would need those to survive, unless ALL halflings live inside other society, made off humans/Elves or Dwarves that can fill those roles better.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 01, 2021, 02:39:52 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 01, 2021, 09:12:52 AM

Quote from: Zelen on August 01, 2021, 03:10:14 AM
To switch gears back towards 5e, I find the layout of the 5e PHB pretty odd. Does anyone else agree?

The book describes some basics for how TTRPGs/D&D work, and then asks you to think of a character. Then the first thing the book does is dump you into a deep list of Races & Classes. Only after you wade through 100 pages of crunch does the game introduce the idea of creating a backstory. Then there's a ton of stuff on equipment, multiclassing, feats, and only after we've waded through all that do we get to character attributes.

I get that in a certain sense with 5e, background story & character attributes aren't really all that important, and they are mentioned briefly beforehand, but I find it strange to dump players headfirst into Race & Class selection.

I'll agree with the sentiment. Lord knows I didn't use it for my own book.

To me a logical layout is;
- Introduction & Basic Rules
- Universal Rules (skills, movement, etc.)
- Character Creation (concept, player motivation, character motivation)
- Kind (my equivalent of Race; so what you're born as)
- Background (who you are outside of adventuring)
- Class (your combat/adventuring abilities)
- Equipment

Basically, all the rules you really need in play are in the first 30-40 pages. Everything else is only needed when building/leveling up a character and will be on your character sheet. Character creation is laid out in the order of concept, what you are, how you were raised, how you were trained to adventure and what equipment you use to do it.

I took a similar approach to the GM material;
- Setting up the campaign (concepts; silly or serious, heroic or horror, restrictions/house rules).
- Building the setting
- Building NPCs (and custom opponents)
- Building Adventures
- Adventure Rewards
- Pre-Gen Opponents (i.e. the Monster Manual)

So again... concept, the world, characters who live in the world, things that happen in the world, rewards for PCs who get involved in the world and finally an appendix of opponents to pit the PCs against if you don't want to use the NPC section to build your own.

While both of you are sorta, kinda correct you forget one thing:

The order is what it is to help you make a character and start playing WITHOUT having to read ALL the rules. Now this might be bad design or an error seeing how many players don't know the very basics of the rules. But that's the intent behind this design.

As for Backgrounds... I'm using them in one of my games: Social, Laboral, School. But those are tables to roll on (or IF the GM allows to choose from), not 15 pages of backstory. This is one of the things I would cut from 5e.

And you answered your own objection. Education 101 is you don't throw people into the deep end if you want retention.

D&D-level characters are a mass of jargon terms and numbers to those not familiar with them (and the jargon isn't consistent across systems).

Drop a bunch of choices with a dozen different choices that mention the jargon before they've learned it and you get the first time player with a 17 Strength and 11 Intelligence choosing the wizard class because they wanted to do big attack spells and Strength mentioned it was important for dealing damage because all the rules covering the differences between melee, ranged and spell attacks and the attributes needed isn't covered until after the equipment section.

Sure, someone could help straighten them out. But my Red Box came from the aisle of a Children's Palace toy store an hour from my home and my game group was the rest of the pre-teens who had 40+ minute bus rides to and from school in rural Wisconsin.

Fortunately for me, the Red Box was AMAZING at teaching a complete noob like me all the rules through its solo adventures that covered each concept as it came up and how to DM in the DM booklet) but good luck with WotC-era D&D... their stuff is written mostly by wonks for wonks and so can get away with horrible organization, but probably lose a number of potential new customers by just presuming someone else will teach them the basics (probably an experienced DM... except those don't come from nowhere).

The other part of design is that such a split up mechanics into various corners of the book is it ignores that even the noobs are only noobs for so long; then the book's primary use is as a reference ("what's the rule for X?") and that means it needs to be easy to find what you're looking for.

Putting all the rules in one spot; basically the first 20% of the book in my case; makes reference a lot easier... if you hit character building you've gone too far.

I didn't just arrive at my chapter order by accident. I've done a lot of playtesting for it and one big part of that was turning print outs in binders over to people unfamiliar with the system to see how well they could navigate it without me having to tell them where to look.

Basic Rules first then character creation was definitely the one noobs grokked best... probably because characters are basically collections of numerical values for and exceptions to the basic rules, so to judge the numbers and exceptions you needed to know the basics to make the comparisons.

The majority of players also had a rough order of operations for character creation which is why my backgrounds (which are honestly more ongoing professions than just what you used to do) ended up coming before classes... i.e. how did an aristocrat become a sorcerer? vs. how did a sorcerer become an aristocrat?

A minority start with what I'd call a class in mind (ex. "I want a big sword" or "I wanna shoot lightning"), but once you address that out of order, the rest tends to fall into place in roughly the same order as the majorty; race/kind, background/profession, class/how they fight, equipment.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 01, 2021, 02:47:48 PM

Quote from: Zelen on August 01, 2021, 01:09:07 PM
Trying to discern delineation of genetics vs. culture is very much in the weeds, particularly given that, at least as far as PHB is concerned, the setting is implied rather than defined.

This much is true to a point. Unless in the setting you define certain cultures, for instance: Dwarves are a hardy race, honorable to a fault, magic resistant,etc.

How would you justify now a Dwarven thief in good standing with Dwarven society? Or a Dwarven Wizard?

On the other hand limiting class choices for Halflings and leaving out Hunters, Warriors and other classes makes zero sense, since they would need those to survive, unless ALL halflings live inside other society, made off humans/Elves or Dwarves that can fill those roles better.

That presumes that every dwarven settlement across 50 million square miles (presuming similar size and land to water ratios as Earth) places the same importance on honor or cultural oddities (which aren't really that odd) that taking things from other groups of people counts as thievery (ex. would a dwarf consider taking things from a tribe of orcs or giants they've been at war with for generations to be theft?).

My races/kind include no cultural elements in their stats for the simple reason that my default setting amounts to 0.05% of an Earth-like planet's land area and only has accurate maps for maybe 10% of the globe and the information on more distant lands is literally hundreds of years and a Cataclysm out of date.

To presume the dwarves 3000 miles away on the other side of a continent and at least one mountain range have an identical culture (or even share a mutually intelligible language) is ludicrous to my mind.

Which is also something that backgrounds are meant to address. If martial prowess is universal in a particular elven culture, then require your aristocrat, artisan, commoner, military and traveler background PCs to take the "Basic Training" boon so they're proficient with a couple of military weapons even if they don't take a class that provides it.

But the hippy nature elves a thousand miles away have no such pressure to learn sword fighting or longbowmanship... those weapons might not even be common in that region (their hunters train with spears and slings... but only their hunters).

Best of all is that you don't need a dozen subraces where the main difference is what weapons they're "naturally" proficient in. They're all elves, they just use different backgrounds.

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 01, 2021, 06:31:29 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 01, 2021, 02:47:48 PM

Quote from: Zelen on August 01, 2021, 01:09:07 PM
Trying to discern delineation of genetics vs. culture is very much in the weeds, particularly given that, at least as far as PHB is concerned, the setting is implied rather than defined.

This much is true to a point. Unless in the setting you define certain cultures, for instance: Dwarves are a hardy race, honorable to a fault, magic resistant,etc.

How would you justify now a Dwarven thief in good standing with Dwarven society? Or a Dwarven Wizard?

On the other hand limiting class choices for Halflings and leaving out Hunters, Warriors and other classes makes zero sense, since they would need those to survive, unless ALL halflings live inside other society, made off humans/Elves or Dwarves that can fill those roles better.

That presumes that every dwarven settlement across 50 million square miles (presuming similar size and land to water ratios as Earth) places the same importance on honor or cultural oddities (which aren't really that odd) that taking things from other groups of people counts as thievery (ex. would a dwarf consider taking things from a tribe of orcs or giants they've been at war with for generations to be theft?).

My races/kind include no cultural elements in their stats for the simple reason that my default setting amounts to 0.05% of an Earth-like planet's land area and only has accurate maps for maybe 10% of the globe and the information on more distant lands is literally hundreds of years and a Cataclysm out of date.

To presume the dwarves 3000 miles away on the other side of a continent and at least one mountain range have an identical culture (or even share a mutually intelligible language) is ludicrous to my mind.

Which is also something that backgrounds are meant to address. If martial prowess is universal in a particular elven culture, then require your aristocrat, artisan, commoner, military and traveler background PCs to take the "Basic Training" boon so they're proficient with a couple of military weapons even if they don't take a class that provides it.

But the hippy nature elves a thousand miles away have no such pressure to learn sword fighting or longbowmanship... those weapons might not even be common in that region (their hunters train with spears and slings... but only their hunters).

Best of all is that you don't need a dozen subraces where the main difference is what weapons they're "naturally" proficient in. They're all elves, they just use different backgrounds.

So you postulate different cultures off the same race, which is fine and dandy, but you also postulate all races to be equal? Can Dwarves be wizards? If not why?

Elves: I don't use a dozen subraces, Elves are Elves and their culture makes them different, except of course theDökkálfar who separated so long ago from Elven society they are now a different race.

I also don't use half-anything, Elves can't interbreed with non-Elves and so on.

But, since I'm not gonna write a whole LotR to give to the GM/Players Racial stats are a thing and get used. Because different animals have different ways of surviving.

So, Dwarven society values honor above everything else, any Dwarf that doesn't gets ostracized and more likely than not can't reproduce. A Dwarven culture (or human, Elven, etc) that decides that stealing from the other races is okay I think would face serious opposition from the other races AND from the honorable Dwarfs.

IF the GM wants to postulate a new continent or island where Dwarfs are thiefs he can do so of course, b ut he'll have to deal with the possibility of the PCs or other NPCs reacting to that.

You must remember it's not a novel but a living world, where things happen even when the PCs aren't there.

Now, you can write your games as you like and I'm perfectly fine with that. I'm just arguing that from my POV somethings make (or not) sense.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 01, 2021, 02:47:48 PM

This much is true to a point. Unless in the setting you define certain cultures, for instance: Dwarves are a hardy race, honorable to a fault, magic resistant,etc.

How would you justify now a Dwarven thief in good standing with Dwarven society? Or a Dwarven Wizard?

But both are GM/player territory probably best served by home brew.

A Wizard might be seen as a fringe engineer of some sort experimenting with the same forces the elves use but in a Dwarvish way since magical donkeys would be nice to turn a millstone or something? Would be something of a cultural outsider weirdo like a mad scientist who is always on the edge of being on the outs but maybe stays on the right side of line. Might still be respectable even if he gives people a bad feeling about what he does down in his labs.

A Dwarven thief might be okay if he were a repo-man and a locksmith who had those skills but not really the same "profession" or criminal status. That assumes Dwarven concepts of contract and ownership are not all based on possession but on some codified legal right tied to a purchase or grant or formalized transfer.

Quote from: palaeomerus on August 01, 2021, 08:10:43 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 01, 2021, 02:47:48 PM

This much is true to a point. Unless in the setting you define certain cultures, for instance: Dwarves are a hardy race, honorable to a fault, magic resistant,etc.

How would you justify now a Dwarven thief in good standing with Dwarven society? Or a Dwarven Wizard?

But both are GM/player territory probably best served by home brew.

A Wizard might be seen as a fringe engineer of some sort experimenting with the same forces the elves use but in a Dwarvish way since magical donkeys would be nice to turn a millstone or something? Would be something of a cultural outsider weirdo like a mad scientist who is always on the edge of being on the outs but maybe stays on the right side of line. Might still be respectable even if he gives people a bad feeling about what he does down in his labs.

A Dwarven thief might be okay if he were a repo-man and a locksmith who had those skills but not really the same "profession" or criminal status. That assumes Dwarven concepts of contract and ownership are not all based on possession but on some codified legal right tied to a purchase or grant or formalized transfer.

But magical resistance isn't cultural but genetic. It's not Dwarves reject magic, it's they are magic resistant.

On the rest, yes, I agree, you can workaround the limitations by creating a new class with the same class skils but used in a different way or for different reasons.

Quote from: palaeomerus on August 01, 2021, 08:10:43 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 01, 2021, 02:47:48 PM

This much is true to a point. Unless in the setting you define certain cultures, for instance: Dwarves are a hardy race, honorable to a fault, magic resistant,etc.

How would you justify now a Dwarven thief in good standing with Dwarven society? Or a Dwarven Wizard?

But both are GM/player territory probably best served by home brew.

A Wizard might be seen as a fringe engineer of some sort experimenting with the same forces the elves use but in a Dwarvish way since magical donkeys would be nice to turn a millstone or something? Would be something of a cultural outsider weirdo like a mad scientist who is always on the edge of being on the outs but maybe stays on the right side of line. Might still be respectable even if he gives people a bad feeling about what he does down in his labs.

A Dwarven thief might be okay if he were a repo-man and a locksmith who had those skills but not really the same "profession" or criminal status. That assumes Dwarven concepts of contract and ownership are not all based on possession but on some codified legal right tied to a purchase or grant or formalized transfer.

Class skillsets are not necessarily occupations. I could easily see a dwarven rogue being a trapsmith and 'tiger team' director who helps test security measures in a fortress.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 01, 2021, 08:20:47 PM

Quote from: palaeomerus on August 01, 2021, 08:10:43 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 01, 2021, 02:47:48 PM

This much is true to a point. Unless in the setting you define certain cultures, for instance: Dwarves are a hardy race, honorable to a fault, magic resistant,etc.

How would you justify now a Dwarven thief in good standing with Dwarven society? Or a Dwarven Wizard?

But both are GM/player territory probably best served by home brew.

A Wizard might be seen as a fringe engineer of some sort experimenting with the same forces the elves use but in a Dwarvish way since magical donkeys would be nice to turn a millstone or something? Would be something of a cultural outsider weirdo like a mad scientist who is always on the edge of being on the outs but maybe stays on the right side of line. Might still be respectable even if he gives people a bad feeling about what he does down in his labs.

A Dwarven thief might be okay if he were a repo-man and a locksmith who had those skills but not really the same "profession" or criminal status. That assumes Dwarven concepts of contract and ownership are not all based on possession but on some codified legal right tied to a purchase or grant or formalized transfer.

But magical resistance isn't cultural but genetic. It's not Dwarves reject magic, it's they are magic resistant.

On the rest, yes, I agree, you can workaround the limitations by creating a new class with the same class skils but used in a different way or for different reasons.

Not all versions of dwarves have magic resistance. It's not a feature of either the 4E or 5e dwarves (they resist poison though).

Likewise, wizard and sorcerer (and rogues/thief) have been class options for dwarves for more than 20 years now.

In my setting the common history is that the dwarves invented (not discovered, invented) arcane magic as a weapon to fight the Demon Empire and are some of its greatest practitioners in both wizardry and the forging of magic devices.

Also... why would you need a new class for dwarves skilled in working with locks and traps? Because the name on the tin says "thief?" Hell, using the Rogue as a merchant or well-schooled aristocrat (8+Int skill points per level and a very broad skill list makes them an ideal "skill monkey") was a thing even in 3.0e and 3.5e doubled down with things like skill tricks.

I mean, we are in a topic about making a clone of 5e and not an OSR system so the points above should just be taken as a matter of course.

My clone will have these ideas to start with

Ten-Level Scale - Cook everything down to a 10-level progression. Focus the design of the mechanics to meet this standard. Higher level play will be tighter but can be expanded to later. The assumptions would be at 10th level the gameplay would be the equivalent of 15+ in standard D&D.

Slow Progression - Make these levels matter. By condensing the power into 10-levels players should get maximum hang-time in the pocket of each level to make it matter in play.

+10 will be the max Class-bonus to do anything. Each class will emphasize it's "thing" whether its combat or magic, thievery etc. I'd design around this core idea. Where there is an exception to this - I would make these rare.

AC is now Defense = 10+ your To Hit bonus. Unless we're using the modified Combat system below which is Talislanta-based.

Armor - Absorbs damage. Scaled appropriately to weapon damage ranges.

HP - Flat progress. Everyone starts with Class Starting die plus Con bonus. Everytime you level you get a flat rate + con bonus. Optional rule might allow HP progress to be different per-class.

Small General Skill list - We don't need a gigantic skill list for the core. Expansion of the skill list should happen at the setting-level.

Task Resolution/Combat Scaling - Degrees of success. I'd cook into the system a Savage Worlds-inspired bonuses/penalty for degrees of success or failure with the rubric being that you only roll the die when it matters. There will be assumed basic levels of competency based on the skill-level of a PC/NPC based on their skill rating. This will allow non-casters to keep pace with ending fights as quickly as casters once the bonus effects of standard damage resolution + skill improvement reflects these outcomes in combat.

Magic - Modular. I'd propose two systems based on the what the GM wants in their game. For low-magic, I'd leverage the standard Skill System where spells are simply Skills that only caster classes can know. Non-casters might be able to learn them but they would lack the inherent bonuses of the Casters classes to pull off larger scale effects. I would leverage this "low-magic" system to be representative of Vancian Magic for traditionalists. For "High Magic" it would be effects based. I'd break it up into Schools which each have bonuses/penalties to a variety of effects (or modes). Then those basic modes would have a School-based effect modified by the Caster class's abilities. So for example a Necromancer and an Invoker might both have Bolt (as a mode) in their school. There would be a standard formula for damage for "Bolt" but the School/Caster Class would add other effects based on the School. A Necromantic bolt would do damage + Necromantic effects (which could be scaled up or down for Level/Class etc.) Same with the Invoker Bolt.

Technically you could have BOTH systems in play simultaneously to show "Primitive" magic vs. "Mageocracy" magic.

Possible Task Resolution mechanics
Modified Talislanta Task Resolution - 1d20. 1-5 is a Fail. 6-10 is a Partial Success. 11-20 Total Success. 21+ Critical Success. Opposed Checks take the opponents skill total as a penalty. For every increment of +5 over your opponents roll you get a bonus to <X> (damage, effect, etc) These can be heavily weighted at the Class/Skill level.

That's where I'd start my design process.

Edit: As for non-Wokeness. I'm not Woke. So I would not suffer this. Evil will exist. Races will exist. So will species. And differences will exist between them as a biological reality. Most of this can be handled at the setting-based level.

Few bits of direct propaganda. Otherwise it's not woke game in terms of mechanics or themes so I do not care about much more.
I'm not 5e fan, but it is not woke game. Woke are just out-of-game virtue signallings of WOTC.

If we talk about overall D&D dreams, then let's think:

- Scale down HP, more deadly, optimally options for more realistic and bloody combat with specific injuries and their specifc results
- Planetouched turned from specific quirky races into skins you can apply to any race but by raw rules you had to roll on how strong and how applied demonic/angelic/axiomatic/elemental taint shall be - with big random table for each outsider ancestry and possible results including on equal foot attribute bonuses and penalties, special spell like abilities, and visual changes randomly rolled no more guaranteed succub-cambion style. You can end with tiefling who's only demonic element is +2 Dex and no one without planar or magical help with recognize it, or you can end with unholy abomination with -4 to Wisdom. Play with fire, take your chances.
- Replace dragonborn with draconic kobolds.
- Make basic goblinoids and orcs as playable races without woke-washing their attributes or notions that most members of those will be rather bad.
- Kill all tengu in the setting 40 years before start of game in massive god-made genocide.
- Make cleric robe-priest low-melee as a basic, just as druid, current druid and cleric merges with paladin to make... let's say templar - sort of weaker Fighter with limited access to divine domains. (For Druid it will be simply Barbarian linked stronger to spiritualism/shamanism - muggle fighter from barbaric tribe will simply be berserker fighter.
- Make cleric lists of miracles strictly Sphere based. Make like 44 Divine Spheres each with list of miracles per sphere level. No more healing for clerics of god not interested in healing.
You choose which Sphere to up each level, you get your miracles based on this. Complexity of miracles scale with sphere level, their raw power with CL.
- Make warlock strictly pact based with pact and boon heavily inducing gameplay. Make chain warlocks like PF summoners, blade warlocks well like all those hexblades of old, and book warlocks closer to wizards in their attitude. Also vastly different power from each combination.
- Make wizard well more sciencey-occultey arcanist as it should be. He can create basically all powers cleric, warlock or anyone can, but on different levels as he is self-made man, and where gods and patrons supplement things he needs to go true it. So sure make him heal - but also make him roll Medicine check if he won't to heal and not give patient extra tumor because of it, and so on. While others call down magic from above, wizard build his magic from ground up. Lot of mixing spells, changing effects and so on. Alchemists and artificer should be kinds of wizard.
- Maybe include some shaman/medium spirit magic where magic is limited to spirits you can get, so you have vast numbers of options like wizard, but getting new spirits is always risky pain in ass, so where wizard can fail in his calculations, you can fail by giving Medium Kami of Granite Rock wrong kind of berries as sacrifice.

Quote
Quote
To me "species" implies we're talking about different shades of related things, like a Siberian Tiger vs. Bengali Tiger. When races might be humans, plant-things, and entities from another plane of existence, it's pretty odd to use the word species to categorize things that might not have any common ancestor.

QuoteTo me "race" doesn't have any necessary implication of genetic relatedness.

But.. .race if anything is in biology, or was... equivalent of subspecies - which basically replaced it as less problematic term.
So it's even narrower. Like dragons and humans are different species, but if you have humans and elves who crossbreed you could call them quite easily races of one species, or smth like this.
Also Siberian and Bengali tiger are ironically not even separate races, merely separate populations of one race Continental Tiger (as opposed to further removed Island Tiger now limited to Sumatra), very closely tied. (They could evolve in supspecies or even species with time of course).

That's why we talk about human races and not about how shark is of different race than elephant.

QuoteIt's also colored by a formality/scientific classification that's probably not appropriate for most fantasy worlds. YMMV.

I'm really not sure most fantasy used races as default. It's in many ways precisely D&D inheritance.

QuoteYeah, I also don't like species for fantasy games - though I don't think species implies any degree of relation. There are species of algae as well as species of gorilla.

But... gorillas and algae are related. Sure it's relation deep into precambrian era, but nonetheless.

QuotePersonally, and this might just be me, when I read "Ancestry" my brain immediately jumps to thinking this is a background like "Noble," "Nomad," "Merchant", etc. While it expresses a certain aspect of a character, to me it doesn't really feel like it expresses the same inherent properties nor does it capture that the attributes of "Ancestry" are common to a given set of people, rather than an individual.

That I can agree - Ancestry sometimes sounds like your social class/cultural inheritance stuff not necessarily race as in D&D

QuoteHow much of an elf's excellence with bows is based on training, and how much on the super-human dexterity that is genetic?

Elves are +2 to Dex in most games. Sure it's nice, but overall that's slightly better not superior uberdex.

QuoteSo, Dwarven society values honor above everything else, any Dwarf that doesn't gets ostracized and more likely than not can't reproduce. A Dwarven culture (or human, Elven, etc) that decides that stealing from the other races is okay I think would face serious opposition from the other races AND from the honorable Dwarfs.

I think Chris point is in his post-apo fantasy setting basically Fall of Bronze Age/Dark Ages/Black Death/Fallout mashup you don't have Dwarven Culture. You have like 400 Dwarven Cultures isolated from each other all across the world. Developing vastly different cultural traits with time.
Just like in living world you have shitload vastly different cultures of men.

Also even in classic D&D Dwarven world - you need Thieves, because Thief is not just class who steals - you really don't have to - but also more stealthy sneaky warrior and spy, able to disable traps, pick locks and so on. Something Dwarves would very much need to for instance reclaim ancient ruins of their kind (and as later skills are shaped also to install those traps or make good locks). So yeah. Of course there's always - also kinda classic option - that dwarves need halfling thieves any time they try to reclaim ruins of their ancestry because they are unable to pass through own locks and traps

QuoteBut magical resistance isn't cultural but genetic. It's not Dwarves reject magic, it's they are magic resistant.

Sure but Drows are also magic resistant while doing shitload of Magic.
There is no in D&D world assumption that magic resistance = magic inability.
That's I think Warhammer rule, but that's about it.

Also mythically speaking both Germanic dwarves were magical craftsmen, and modern protoRPG Tolkienian dwarves use magic as well. They are based on Semitic people. Underground Akkadian Hermetism mixed with Futhark Runic Goetia - that's dwarven magic, and anyone turning dwarves in drunken non-magical Scot miners can be eaten by woke crowd

[double]

Quote from: Eirikrautha on August 01, 2021, 12:58:30 PM
And what is to say there is not a non-attribute defined hand-eye coordination advantage that comes into play with longbows that elves get?

Sure, you can define a genetic advantage, but in a game where an attribute already defines "dexterity" and its effect on longbow use, that advantage would have to be something other than "dexterity" for me to feel like it's not bolted-on cruft. Maybe you want to say it's their eyesight or something. Fine with me if you can make it sound reasonably believable.

As far as I can tell from the SRD (my only source), 5e does take this into account, and no longer gives elves a random bonus to bow use beyond the increase in dexterity.